


there's an opera out on the turnpike

by cherryvanilla



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Casual Sex, Early in Canon, Episode: s01e01 Pilot, Episode: s01e13 Route 666, Episode: s01e22 Devil's Trap, Episode: s02e11 Playthings, F/F, F/M, Female Dean Winchester, First Time, Genderswap, Music, Pining, Pre-Series, Stanford Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-16 03:22:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10562658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryvanilla/pseuds/cherryvanilla
Summary: She's tried to fill the hole Sam’s left behind with saving other people. Tried to fill it with rock salt and matches and grave digging and shotguns. Tried to fill it with whiskey and beer and fucking and sucking.(Or, five times Deanna Winchester hooks up with someone who reminds her of her brother plus one time she sleeps with the real thing.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eternalsojourn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternalsojourn/gifts).



> Yet another 5 times thing (although somewhere along the way this became way more about the musical cues in one’s life and less relying on that format) and yet another fic that focuses around both Stanford-era (the pining is too much to resist, man) and PlayThings (my personal wincest catalyst headcanon). But this time: Girl!Dean, who is of course played by Amber Heard. 
> 
> Also, this is pretty far from a PWP despite what the summary suggests ;P
> 
> [Here's](http://monalisasnmadhatters.tumblr.com/post/159313926024/deanna-winchesters-unofficial-maudlin) a tumblr photo set/link to a companion mix. 
> 
> Thanks to Abby for beta <33
> 
> This is once again Rena's fault, who made me write it after making an innocent comment on Twitter. Love ya, babe.
> 
> Title by Bruce Springsteen.

_________________________________

1\. _through every endless day_

She waits until Sam’s 18 and has just left her before sleeping with someone who looks like him. His departure is how she rationalizes in her mind finally succumbing to this, when she’s hungover and creeping out of some no-name motel in Helena, Montana at 2 a.m., the guy still sprawled out on the bed, dead to the world. 

She takes some small sense of satisfaction in the fact that she hadn’t given in before this, even though Sam’s been driving her crazy since he was 16, in all the best and worst possible ways. She’s got no reason to stave it off anymore, though. She’s just put her baby brother on a bus to California, and when she goes back to the place they’re staying tonight, Sam won’t be there, and Dad will be slumped on the chair with a bottle loose in his hand.

So, yeah, she picked up a floppy-haired doe-eyed guy and fucked the hell out of him because he reminded her of the brother she won’t see again until God knows when and it finally felt safe enough to do so.

The sad part is, it’s not even the most fucked-up thing she’s ever done. 

It's unsurprising, she thinks, once she’s back on the highway and behind the wheel of her baby, this thing with Sam. This simmering thing that won't go away. The two of them were like Siamese twins, conjoined at the heart or soul or -- something. It’s inevitable, almost, given the way they’ve lived in one another's pockets their whole life. Hell, Sam gave Dean her name. Well, nickname anyway. One year old and trying his damnedest to say “Deanna.” 

It started out as “Dee” and she'd began to smile, and then he'd said, “De-Dean!” 

“Deanna, Sammy,” Dad had corrected, reading the paper while she fed Sam his food. 

“I like Dean,” she said. “Sammy can call me Dean.”

“That's a boy's name,” Dad replied, raising an eyebrow. 

“I don't care,” she replied, voice firm. 

Dad smiled then, slow and fond. “That's my girl.”

She went by both Deanna and Dean after that, but Sam calling her Dean felt different than anyone else doing it. It felt right, like there was a piece of her that belonged only to Sam. 

The day she realized she was in love with him wasn't like some lightbulb going off in her head. It wasn't fireworks. It was simply looking at him as he smiled at her from across the booth at some diner she can't even remember the name of, Dad still out in the parking lot, and thinking, _oh_. 

Dean had never been in love before, never really wanted to be. She'd figured what was the point, they moved all the time anyway. Once she realized she'd never have a normal life it became about taking what she could get, when she could get it. 

Sam was the exception to the rule. He always would be.

She really hadn’t been planning on picking anyone up tonight. She’d set out to the bar to get good and blitzed, the pain in her chest dulling to a hollow ache already, something she was sure wouldn’t subside in the light of day. Wouldn’t subside for a good long while. She laughed to herself, a hollow sound, when I Remember You by Skid Row started playing. It was one of the maudlin hair metal songs she used to love just because it was so cheesy, but mostly because she had a thing for Sebastian Bach. Sam would make fun of her for it.

(“Never pegged you for the pretty boy type, _Deanna_.”

“Why don’t you shut up and listen to more of your Spin Doctors, _Samuel_.”)

Right now Bach is screaming “time after time you've been there for me” and to “remember yesterday” and Dean doesn't want to because yesterday, Sam was teasing her about her duffle bag filled with only flannel shirts and cock rock cassette tapes before he held her hand gently between his own as he pulled out the splinters she got while on the woods on a hunt. Yesterday, Sam offered her the last Pop Tart and asked if they could drive out to look at the stars before Dad got back. Yesterday, Sam was saying goodbye to her in a thousand words and looks while Dean had _no fucking idea_.

When she looked up, she could feel the unshed tears clinging to the corners of her eyes that she refused to let fall. 

“Rough night, honey?” the bartender had asked her, a cute brunette in a tight shirt with tattoos on her arms. 

Dean’s gone for women in the past, won’t turn down much, to be honest. This one was exactly the type she could see herself having a lot of fun with in the backseat of her car, yet it was so far from what she wanted right now that all she could muster up was a ducked, rueful smile. 

“You’ve got no idea, babe.” 

When Dean looked up again, it was to a set of sympathetic eyes as she slid over the two whiskeys Dean’s ordered, all for herself. 

She tossed one back, her bangs falling low against her forehead as she ducked her head again, neck tipping forward, staving off the burn. She had the next shot in her hand when she heard, “Buy you another?” 

“What makes you so sure I want more?” Dean asked without looking at the owner of the voice. She closed her eyes as the liquor burned her throat, good and hard and just how she needed it. 

When she opened her eyes and looked over, mouth curved in a grin and ready to give whoever it was the brush off, she froze. 

The kid was probably 20, if that. Definitely didn’t look old enough to be buying her a drink. He had a baby face and eyes bordering on hazel, and the way his hair fell reminded her of -- 

“You’re right, that was presumptuous of me,” he said, sounding almost sincere. It was a mind fuck, and she couldn’t help but think about the gangly guy that was probably curled up a Greyhound seat, bright-eyed and still innocent in ways he shouldn’t be, and about to start a life without her. 

She leaned an elbow on the bar, the leather of her jacket squeaking against the wood, and turned toward him. Her hair fell along the side of her face as she looked at him, the liquor already doing its work. If she squinted, it was almost like his cheekbones were higher, more defined. If she looked hard enough, she could see dimple indents on his cheeks. 

“Maybe I want you to be presumptuous.” 

Hook, line, and sinker and she had him, saw it in the way his eyes dilated, the way his gaze dropped down to her lips. 

“Name’s Paul.” 

She nodded and was saying, “You can call me Dean,” before she could even think to stop herself. 

She’d never let a hookup call her that before, had always kept that name relegated to her family, Dad’s hunter friends, and most importantly Sam. Always Sam. He called her it more than anyone else. Other people, even Dad, just called her Dee more often than not. 

“Okay,” Paul said, like he didn’t get it. Of course he didn’t. Why would he? This guy wasn’t her brother, and it was as she was leaving the bar with him that she realized no one ever would be. 

Her mind doesn’t stop racing the entire ride back to the motel. Dad’s exactly where Dean expected him to be. The room feels empty without Sam, and that’s when it really sinks in that nothing will ever be the same again.  
_________________________________

2\. _we both made our separate ways_

Dad gave her the leather jacket on her 18th birthday, along with the Impala. 

“Too small to fit your old man anymore,” he’d said, and it had meant everything to her. She remembered that jacket from when he wore it when she was a kid. She remembered it along with an image of Mom, the two of them smiling at her while pushing her on a swing in a park near their house in Lawrence, before Sammy was even a thought. 

She remembered burying her nose in it when she finally let herself cry over Mom, after months of not speaking, not even to Sam, with Tuesday’s Gone playing on the portable radio Dad used to take with them from motel room to motel room, like it was supposed to be some constant. Remembered the hitch in Dad’s own breathing when “my woman’s gone with the wind” echoed from the tinny speakers.

So it’s kind of weird, when the jacket is peeled off of her during sex. The first time it happened, she had an unbidden image of her mom doing it to her dad and quickly squashed it, the way anyone does when their mind unintentionally wanders to their parents’ sex life. It’s something that, tangibly, she knows existed, but it's not like she ever wants to actively picture it. 

It’s even weirder, though, having sex with the amulet Sam gave her strung around her neck. And the second time she picks up someone who looks like him -- intentionally this time, in a bar just outside of Reno -- it’s all she can think about. Big hands shoving the jacket down her arms, a hot mouth on her neck, right where the string rests against her dip of her clavicle. She’s thought about its existence on her before, during times like this. The fact that she’ll never take it off, not for sex, or a shower, not for anything. Between Dad’s jacket and Sam’s necklace, sometimes Dean feels like all she is is pieces of someone else, fitting together like puzzle pieces in an attempt to make her whole. 

She wears Dad’s jacket like a mask, something to transform her into the person she wishes she actually was but only fakes real well. The necklace, though, that’s her shield. Her constant. Like Sam was. Is. 

Was. 

She gasps as the guy moves his mouth lower, sucks and bites at her breast through her white tank top. She’s forgotten his name already. 

It’s been three months without Sam. The holidays are coming up, and everything feels acutely painful in ways that alcohol can’t numb. The dude she picked up tonight had tried to bond with her over a rendition of Every Rose Has Its Thorn that someone had been butchering during karaoke. Not like she ever really liked that song. 

(“What do these lyrics even mean?” Sam asked one time, when they were bored out of their minds with nothing but MTV to entertain them and Dean had been too lazy to change the channel when the video came on. 

“That even the prettiest women can fuck you up,” she'd replied, absently, while cleaning her hunting knife. 

Sam snorted. “I think it’s more misogynistic than that.” 

Dean smiled down at her own reflection in the metal. Sam always was a quick study.

She’d ruffled his hair, cuffing her knuckles against his cheek. “Good man, Sammy.” 

Sam had beamed at her, all of fourteen with still chubby cheeks and an expression on his face like she was his own personal hero.)

The guy in the bar had echoed Sam’s words from years before, unknowingly, and Dean had given him the same answer she gave Sammy in that motel room, not looking up from her drink. 

“Well, you look pretty harmless to me,” he had replied, while Dean thought about the gun she had in her glove compartment and the vengeful spirit she took out two days ago. 

Normally, she would have clocked the guy one good. Instead, she left with him, someone’s heartfelt version of November Rain the last thing she heard as they walked out of the bar. 

Now, she fights not to roll her eyes as she rides the guy's dick like it was her job, his hands squeezing her tits while calling her ‘baby’. She keeps them closed instead, her fingers forming a tight fist around the amulet, holding it close between her breasts, imaging Sam’s hand locked around her own. 

She comes. 

Back in the Impala, after creeping out of the guy’s apartment, she digs her copy of Use Your Illusion I out of the glove compartment and pops it in. 

“Fuckin’ November,” she mutters, lighting up a cigarette and pressing fast-forward until that goddamn melancholy piano starts up. 

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.  
_________________________________

3\. _running over the same old ground_

Cassie isn’t a Sam look-a-like, obviously. But the second Dean meets her while on a job in Athens, Sam is all she can think about. Maybe because she’s in school too, and Dean can’t help but relate college to her baby brother, probably having just finished up winter break himself, probably not even thinking about how Dean’s birthday is coming up. 

She wonders if Sam’s okay, where he stayed during break. She thinks about it on her coffee date with Cassie and then realizes she categorized it as a “date.” She has no idea why Cassie even gave her the time of day. Dean had gone to the library at Ohio University to do research for the case he was working with Dad (she missed the days when Sam would be all too willing to go to the library for her; it was the one thing Sam liked about hunts) and bumped into Cassie, literally, in the stacks. Something made her flirt immediately; something made Cassie flirt right back, throwing her an amused quirk of an eyebrow that -- well, that resembled Sam’s patented ‘what am I gonna do with you, Deanna,’ look so much that it’d taken her breath away. 

So, no, Cassie isn’t a Sam look-a-like. She’s just more like Sam in a million other ways than anyone between here and Reno has been in months. 

They don’t hook up. They don’t even kiss. Cassie gives Dean her number and Dean stares at it while sitting in the Impala in front of the hotel room. She tosses it onto the floor and kicks the car into gear, heading out to the bar instead of inside to Dad. 

It takes her two different joints to find her Sam look-a-like, and when she does, she lets him fuck her in a bathroom stall, head thrown back and staring at the dirty ceiling, wondering what the hell she’s even doing. Wish You Were Here by Floyd is playing on the jukebox as she stumbles out of the bar -- the denim skirt that she only breaks out when she wants to get it in quickly still askew -- and it's like a punch to the heart.

(“Can we not listen to The Wall for like, a minute dude?” 

“You're blasphemous, Sammy. Seriously. And if you don't shut your cakehole I'll make you ride with Dad.”

“Hey, I like that one song. That wish you were with me thing.”

“You’ve butchered the title. Plus that's not even on this album!”

“I know, that's why I like it!”

“Bitch.”

“Jerk.”

Her face had hurt from smiling so hard. She ejected the album at the end of side two, forewent the second tape, and slid in Wish You Were Here without looking over at Sammy yet knowing he was smiling too as Shine On You Crazy Diamond started. Sam didn't really care for the band much, but he was kinda fascinated by Syd Barrett after listening to Dean yap on about him.) 

Dean doesn’t feel any euphoria as she walks back out to the car. She feels nothing at all, actually. 

Sitting in the front seat, rain tapping loudly on the windows and Zeppelin on the tape deck, her baby’s hum and the music are the only constants in her life. She stares at her phone, thinks about calling Sam or even just texting him. Imagines a million different things she could say, imagines what he’d respond with. Instead, she retrieves the small piece of looseleaf paper from the footwell. 

She puts Cassie’s number in her phone and starts typing out a message. 

_I had a great time today and would love to see you again_. 

It’s more than she usually allows herself. 

After thirty seconds of biting her lip she adds, _this is Deanna btw_

 _Nah, I thought it was the other girl who bought me coffee and likes crappy music_

Deans grinning as she types back, _stick with me long enough and I'll school u on the good stuff_

They get to second base when Dean sees her again two nights later, in the backseat of the car, Cassie’s moans filling in her ears as she rolls one hard nipple between her fingers and sucks a bruise onto the skin of her neck. 

She doesn't tell Dad about it. She's never told him about the girls, is honestly worried what he'd say. It's one more reason she sticks to guys more often than not, and then she feels pathetic and envies Sam all the more. All the times he yelled at Dad, all the times he stood up for what he believed in, while all Dean’s ever tried to do is be a good daughter: the one she thought Mom would be proud of, the person she thought Mom would want her to be for Dad, because she couldn't be there for him herself. 

When Dad says it's time to pack it on up, Dean asks if she can stay a little while longer. 

“What's so interesting in Athens?”

She ducks her head, blush high on her cheeks. 

“Oh,” he says, and when she looks back up, she can't read his expression. She thinks there might be some disappointment in it, but she doesn't think he knows about Cassie, hasn't brought her around. Last night she ate Cassie out in her dorm room, making her scream, until her neighbors started pounding on the walls. 

“Call me Dean,” she told Cassie, right before making her come against her tongue. It felt like giving a piece of herself away.

“It isn't good to get attached, Deanna,” is what Dad says before climbing into the truck. 

Yeah, she thinks, there's disappointment in his expression for sure, but there’s more than that. There’s a lifetime of hurt and pain hiding behind his eyes and a desire to shield her from the same fate.

It's that pain she thinks of a two weeks later when she's lying in a cheap motel room with Cassie tucked under her arm. It's the image of Dad’s sad, widower's eyes and Sammy’s youthful, hopeful face that makes her tell Cassie what she's never told anyone else. 

It all falls apart in an instant. Of course it does. 

From that moment on, she leaves normal behind; leaves it to Sam. 

She drives on the open road, alone, a deep longing settling low in her chest. She thinks about Cassie’s face when she’d told her what her family does. Thinks about the confusion, incredulity, and finally, fear. She gasses up, eyes the cigarettes behind the counter while paying, and leaves without them. Here I Go Again by Whitesnake follows her outside and all she can think is _yep_. 

When she meets up with Dad in Lincoln, he asks if she's okay. Her poker face must be taking a sabbatical. 

“I don't really know,” Dean replies.

It’s the most honest thing she's ever said to him.  
_________________________________

4\. _but the secret is still my own_

Sam’s radio silence hurts like a bitch. If she pushes it back and away and down, locks it up so deep, then she can actually manage to get by, function. That’s how she spends nearly four years. Four long years of trying not to remember she has a brother out there who left her in this world, left her to try and make it without a fundamental piece of her genetic makeup. To try and find a purpose that is something other than “Watch out for Sammy.” 

She's tried to fill the hole Sam’s left behind with saving other people. Tried to fill it with rock salt and matches and grave digging and shotguns. Tried to fill it with whiskey and beer and fucking and sucking. 

They never talk about him. He's like another one of the ghosts they chase after, except will never be able to salt and burn. The closest they ever get to “talking” about Sam are the times that they're in California and Dad makes it a point to swing by Palo Alto, regardless of if it's out of the way. They sit in the car, shaded by trees, and wait to see if there will be a glimpse of Sam on campus. Dean’s held her breath each time. And the once or twice they actually, miraculously, managed to see him, it felt like lightning in a bottle. Sam was still floppy-haired but he was getting taller, broader. And he was smiling. Smiling in ways Dean couldn't remember ever seeing before. It made her chest ache. 

The last time she saw him with Dad, Dean sat in the car and willed Sam to just look behind him, sense her presence. He never did. 

Dean had spoken to Sam exactly once during his time at school. Two years earlier, drunk and face down in a motel room bed that smelled old and musty, Dad on the other side of the country and nothing to turn her brain off aside from the alcohol until she waited to hear from him. She'd scrolled through her phone and found herself pressing the call button on Sam’s contact.

“Dean? Is that you?” Sam’s voice had sounded so far away and so young, and Dean had ached down to her core.

“Sorry, man. Didn't mean to --”

“Are you drunk? Are you alright?” Worry had been evident in his tone, and Dean couldn't believe she was drunk-dialing her brother. 

“I'm fine. You're good?”

“I'm -- yeah. Yeah, Dean, I'm good.” More than once she'd tried to dissect those words, so much packed into one sentence. Confusion, resignation, conviction. 

“Good. Take care of yourself, Sammy.”

And then she’d hung up.

The first time she makes it out to California on her own is because Dad’s disappeared and the only thought on her brain is _Sam Sam Sam_. If she's honest with herself, she knows she's using his disappearance as an excuse to do the one thing she hasn't been able to for four years. She isn't sure when exactly she became so paralyzed by fear; perhaps she's never been anything but. 

She does recon on her baby brother like he's a job. She stakes out the campus, breaks into the Bursar’s office, finds Sam's record, and jots down his address on her hand. 

He lives just off campus in a small apartment complex, and Dean wonders how he affords it. Wonders if Sammy still hustles pool in his free time, using all the tricks Dean herself taught him over the years. 

She watches the place the first night, yet can't make herself go in. Instead, she finds a bar just off campus, a place that she can picture Sam in. She missed his 21st birthday. She's missed a lot of things. 

(“You ever think about college, Dean?” Sam asked one day, the two of them lazing on the Impala in the summer sun, parked in the middle of a field and stretched out on her baby’s hot metal. Dean was 20 and going nowhere; Sam was 16 and turning into something she had no right wanting. 

“Nope. This is my life, Sammy. Yours too.” She said the last two words with finality, trying to shut him down, will away any foolish aspirations from his mind that would only lead to disappointment. Dad would never allow it, Dean knew; she’d given up on any hope for normal when she was Sam’s age. 

“Doesn’t have to be,” Sam had whispered, voice so quiet, his arm brushing her own. She’d shivered and known in that moment that one day she’d lose him, as clear as she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop the feelings that had been growing and twisting like vines, deep and ugly inside her for months now.) 

She finds the pool table immediately, but her heart isn't in the hustling mood tonight, no matter how good it would feel to take one of these rich, preppy frat boys down a peg. 

She scopes out the bar as she plays, Alone by Heart aptly blasting on the jukebox, until she finds a guy that fits the bill. From behind she can pretend it really is Sam, and is struck with the realization that this was the one place in the country that it actually could be. Sam is permanent in this place now. He's locked himself to California, whilst Dean has no home, no roots, nowhere to grow. 

The guy turns to the right, and it's not Sam. The jaw is all wrong, the nose too big. 

She locks eyes with him anyway. It feels even weirder than usual, seeking out a Sam doppelgänger in this town. Dean’s thought once or twice about going to a shrink in some non-descript town under a fake name and someone else’s insurance plan. About confessing to someone how she's picked up a handful of guys over the last few years to have sex with just because they remind her of her brother. She wonders what the doctor would think, if they'd look at her the way she hopes they would: with disgust and judgement in their eyes. It's what she deserves. Sometimes she feels broken in ways that nothing can fix, and in those times she's glad that Sam got away, glad he doesn't have to be present for her perverse love. 

She can't shut her brain off tonight, tangled up in ways she hasn't been in a while. and so when this fresh-faced college kid is kissing her outside the bar and panting against her neck, she pushes him away before it gets too far. 

“Sorry, man. Gonna have to take a raincheck.”

“You mean that?” He licks his shiny red lips, and all she can see is Sam. 

“No,” Dean admits, sighing to herself. “Probably not.” She shoves her hands in her leather jacket and pushes off the wall. 

She can feel his eyes on her as she walks away and stops in the middle of the parking lot, turning on her heel. “Hey. You know a guy named Sam? Tall, dark hair?” 

“Can't say I do,” he replies, shrugging his shoulders. 

Dean sniffs, her fingers itching for a cigarette even though she quit that first year after he left. An attempt to rid herself of another vice. “Yeah. Thought not.” 

Dean doesn't look back again. She heads to the hotel and thinks of nothing as she jerks off in the shower.

The next night she takes Sam down without any effort at all and tries not to focus on how different he feels from the last time they sparred. Sam's all wide muscle and lightly tanned skin, and when he flips her onto his back to prove he's not so out of practice, she very deliberately does not think about the way his thighs are bracketing her own and the way his hands skim ever so slightly down her sides. 

They can't stop looking at one another when they're finally standing. Dean doesn't think she's changed much (maybe she's let her hair grow out a bit), but Sam's looking at her like he's never seen her before, and it's affecting her in ways she can't deal with right now, not with him right here, in the flesh. 

And then a pretty blonde girl appears who bears way too much of a resemblance to Dean herself, right down to the freckles, and Dean’s world tilts on its axis. 

A few days later, the pretty blonde girl burns on the ceiling of their apartment, and Dean is pulling Sam out of yet another fire. 

It's Sam's world that has tilted now, and when they leave Palo Alto together, Dean wishes she could give him everything back that he's lost, even if it means giving him up again. 

_________________________________

5\. _and I'm getting closer than I ever thought I might_

It isn't some fairytale, being back on the road with Sam. Not like Dean thought it would be. Sam's lost the woman he loves and any shot at normal, at least for now. There's a simmer of blind rage under his blank stare. Dean doesn't know what to do, how to act. Sam has nightmares, he cries in bed, he screams Jessica’s name. 

Dean lays awake in random motel rooms and wants to go to Sam, wants to take the pain away, drain it from him. She wants Sam to lean on her, to let her be his big sister again, but he just pulls away even farther.

They find hunts, they choke down the pain, they do what Winchesters do best. Except Dean would really love it if Sam were longing for some heart-to-hearts right now. Anything but this shell of his former self. She may have missed out on four years but she knows this isn't him. She remembers the grief after Mom died. Her dad’s and her own. This feels worse somehow, because it's Sammy’s and she can't make it stop. 

She tries to. She picks fights over dumb things while they drive, tries to make him laugh, even tries to get him laid. 

“I'm not interested,” he says, not even looking up at the waitress Dean pointed out. 

“That girl could make me believe in God, man.”

“Then you go home with her,” Sam says, voice flat. 

Dean knows Sam is aware that she goes for girls as well as guys. They used to bond over it in hotel rooms when Dad was long gone and Sam was 16 with only one thing on the brain. They both wanted to bang Cameron Diaz and thought Halle Berry in that swimsuit was everything. It felt safe, talking about girls. 

It doesn't really feel that way, now. 

Sam looks up at her when Dean says nothing, and his eyes are almost challenging. 

“I totally could.”

Sam raises one eyebrow, and Dean doesn't know why it makes her flush. All she knows is there's an undercurrent right now that hasn't been present yet in their time together on the road, and she has no idea if it's all on her end or not.

“Whatever, man,” Dean says, taking a long swig of her beer and trying to get her blush under control. 

Sam laughs, ducking his head, hair falling in his eyes. Dean’s heart flips in her chest. When Sam raises his head again, he looks more carefree than he has since Jessica died. 

Their gazes catch and hold. She swears Sam’s eyes dip to her lips. Somewhere, dimly in the distance, REO’s Can't Fight This Feeling is playing, and Dean’s just about done with having events in her life sync up to a cheesy rock ballad soundtrack. 

Dean hasn't ever really thought of this thing as something that extends beyond her own psyche, is the thing. Something that could branch outward and reach Sam. She did research on it once, when she was in a library for a hunt. Found herself in the human psychology section and felt like Sam, like all those times she'd have to pull him away from his books. 

It’s because of those books she knows it's _possible_ that Sam’s thought about it, had found some statistic about how a certain percentage of people do, from puberty to early adulthood. She can't remember the exact details now, perhaps just wanted to wipe it from her mind, because what was the point? This thing was hers, and thinking it could be Sam’s too was like wishing the plague on him. It wasn't right. 

And now -- now it's all she can think about, with the way his eyes are on her, like he's learning her anew. 

“I'm getting another beer,” Dean says, clearing her throat and dragging her fingers through her hair. 

“Uh, yeah. Cool.” Sam clears his own throat, and Dean doesn't look at him as she walks away, exhaling on a shaky breath. The waitress is behind the bar and Dean gives her a once over, but she’s not really what she wants tonight, even if she swung Dean’s way. 

It's either fate or a curse that there's a guy with Sam’s general build and features at the bar, and well, Dean’s never believed much in fate. 

He looks at her, raises his beer, and she gives him a sly grin. 

Dean's acutely aware of Sam’s eyes on her back the whole time the guy chats her up. It isn't until she's downed another drink and is leaning into him that she realizes this is the first time Sam’s ever seen her go for someone that looks like him. Dean goes hot and cold all over, body and mind at war. 

She risks a glance backward, sees Sam eying her with intent. She can't parse his expression, can't even begin to try. 

“Let's get out of here,” she says to the guy whose name she hasn't learned. 

She doesn't look at Sam again, heart thudding loud in her chest. 

The guy eats her out, and she whispers Sam's name as she comes. 

She sneaks into their room at 3 a.m., trying not to wake him up. 

She doesn't sleep. 

“Good night?” Sam asks the next morning, standing over her bed with a breakfast sandwich in one hand and a bottle of Advil in the other. He makes the words sound like an accusation. 

“10 out of 10, would bang again.”

Sam raises an eyebrow, and Dean groans, sitting up and rolling her shoulders. It's too early for this shit, and her head is pounding. “What, man?”

“Just. Didn't really seem like your type.” 

Dean’s stomach clenches. Sam’s looking at her curiously, imploring her to say… what, she doesn't know. 

Dean opens the pill bottle and swallows two dry, then pushes off the bed. 

“What do you know of my type, Sammy?” She closes the door behind her and slumps against it, breathing hard.

(“I like bad boys,” Dean giggled as she passed a joint between them over the small space of the bed. Dad would kill her if he knew she was getting Sammy high, but she’d rather it be her than someone else. They were watching _Less Than Zero_ because it was the only thing on the one cable channel they got. 

“Yeah? No clean-cut yuppie Andrew McCarthy for you, Dee?” 

Sam sounded loose and happy, and Dean wanted to bottle it up. At 17, Sam seemed forever angry now, him and Dad locked in a repetitious stand-off of school and moving and what’s right and fair and what’s selfish and childish. 

“Nah, Sammy Boy. Need a guy with a bit of an edge, you know?” 

He’d looked at her, like he was trying to crawl inside her brain, figure her out, see through all her defenses. Dean glanced away before he could get too far, and then blamed anything else she’d imagined in his eyes all on the drugs.)

“Fuck,” she whispers as she slides onto the cool tile of the bathroom floor, head in her hands. “Fuck.” 

Sam doesn't bring it up again once they're on the road. Dean wants to shake him and make words fall out because anything is better than this, even a chick flick moment with bonus incest. 

But still Sam says nothing, and the road stretches on. Dean doesn't push random girls at Sam in bars again, and she doesn't pick up any dark-haired guys with big, innocent, hazel puppy dog eyes.

She had a good run, but it was time to give up that ghost, especially when she's got the real thing, live and tangible and seated next to her. 

When they work a job for Cassie, Dean can feel Sam's eyes on her the entire time. He doesn't say anything when she doesn't come back to the motel that one night, but Dean can tell he wants to. It's terrifying, being around Cassie with Sam. Even more terrifying than that guy in the bar. Maybe because she had really wanted to give this a go, back then, the first time in her life that she'd ever felt that way. Maybe because she's worried Sam will put together all the ways he and Cassie are alike and call her on it for real this time. 

Regardless, she leaves Cassie behind, kissing her, too aware of the points at which Sam watches and the exact moment he looks away. 

When Sam awkwardly mentions that someone like Cassie is a good reason to stay, all Dean can do in response is look at him with a small smile on her face. Her gaze gets caught on his profile, her face completely broken open with love and affection as she wonders if he can tell that the only thing she needs, has ever needed, is right there beside her.  
_________________________________

+1 _this is the wonder of devotion_

“No sir,” Sam says, eyes not leaving Dean’s in the rearview. “Not above everything.” 

Dean's weak and bloodied, and Sam’s standing up to Dad again, there's nothing new there, except this time it makes her heart stutter. 

Because Sam is choosing her. Choosing her over Dad, over the thing that killed Mom and Jess, over _everything_ , and Dean's so in love with him she can hardly breathe, in a way that has nothing to do with the pain in her body. 

It's different, after that. It feels so much more like the two of them against the world, and not just because they lose Dad and it basically _is_ , despite the hunters they find along the way. 

Dean feels like she's a mirror image of Sam from a year ago, those first few weeks after Dad. Numb, unable to get warm, angry. Tired. Resentful. 

(“I shouldn’t be alive,” Sam said one time after a particularly bad nightmare, Dean sitting on the edge of her own bed and not knowing what the hell to do. “I shouldn’t be me. It just -- it should’ve been me, Dean.” 

“Don’t say that, Sammy,” she’d whispered into the darkness, wanting so bad to take his pain away.)

She gets it now, how he felt. She shouldn’t be alive, should’ve stayed dead. She lashes out at Sam initially but soon gravitates toward him, lets his presence surround her. He's all she's got left, and he's always been so much more than anyone else to begin with, despite her love for Dad, despite knowing deep down she was never his favorite, no matter how good of a soldier she was. It was always Sam. It's always Sam for everyone, and she's not going to let anything happen to him, regardless of what her father asked of her. Fuck destiny, fuck fate, it doesn’t exist. 

Sam's more stubborn about it, though, wants promises from Dean that she can't make. In the end, alcohol is the catalyst. It always is, in her experience.  
_________________________________

Sam's an adorable drunk. It's unfair, really. Dean gets sloppy and unattractive, but Sam is cute as a button. Except when he's touching her face, the corner of her mouth, head so close to hers like he's going to keep leaning forward until he can't anymore. Then, Sam's terrifying as all hell, and not just from what he's asking of her. 

She sits for long minutes after he falls asleep, touching her own mouth, the ghost of his fingers still echoing long minutes after. 

She gets her own drink down at the bar, finds the place to be even more like The Shining than she previously thought. When she gets back to the room, Sam's still passed out on his stomach. 

Dean sighs and takes a long shower, because despite the age of this place, it's still nicer accommodations than she's seen in years, and there's always something to be said for good water pressure. 

When she gets out, still wrapped in a towel, Sam is sitting up, blinking and looking even more puppy-like than usual. 

“You should be asleep, drunkie.”

“Don't wanna.” He sounds sullen like a child. 

“Too bad,” Dean says, flipping her hair down and toweling it off. 

She can feel Sam's eyes on her and is aware of just how naked she is under the other towel. 

“Cold,” Sam says. 

Dean snorts and grabs her underwear from her bag. “So use the blanket.”

“Sleep with me tonight, Dee. Like we used to.”

He rarely calls her Dee. His voice is slurred, still drunk and barely awake. 

She shouldn't. She really shouldn't. “Haven't done that since you were 11, Sammy.”

Sam sighs behind her, and she hears him flop over. “Don't wanna be alone anymore.” He sounds close to tears, and God, he's a maudlin drunk. 

“Geez, alright, hold your horses.”

She changes in the bathroom, pulls on a Metallica tee and some boxer shorts that could be hers or could be Sam’s. Normally she’d just wear a tank top, is always warm at night regardless of the weather, but she's feeling like she needs a bit more coverage tonight. 

She climbs in behind Sam, and her brain screams at her to abort this mission while her body sighs out its content, feeling like everything is finally locking into place. 

“Go to sleep, Sammy,” she whispers, arms wrapped around his middle. 

He sighs and wiggles back a little. Dean presses her face in closer, nuzzles his shoulder. 

“I got you, little brother,” she whispers when his breathing has evened out. She knows him like the back of her hand, better than she knows anyone. She knows what it sounds like when he falls asleep and what the sounds of his nightmares beginning are. She knows the difference between them and a vision. She knows what he sounds like when he jerks off and doesn't want her to hear it. That's happened less since they've been on the road. Dean has no idea if he's just taken to jerking it in the shower or what, but when Sam was a teenager, it was definitely a thing, one they both never really talked about, seeing as Dean had her own needs too. 

She stops thinking about her brother jerking off, while her hands are resting across his belly, and tries to sleep. She gets in an hour's worth or so before she's roused again. Sam’s turned in his sleep and they're somehow all pressed together now, their legs tangled, chests flushed. 

Sam’s arms are low around her waist, his face tucked against her neck like he's trying to make himself small against her. Sam makes a small noise, and his ankle rubs against hers. 

Dean’s heartbeat thumps unsteady between them, and she's frozen in place. She knows the moment he wakes up again. 

“Dean?” he whispers, voice low and rough. 

“Yeah,” she whispers back, throat dry. She forces out a laugh, tries not to focus on the way his fingers are now tracing up and down the thin fabric of her t-shirt, over the knobs of her spine. “Man, you are gonna have one bitch of a hangover.”

“Shut up,” Sam groans. 

“Nah.”

“Shut up,” he says again, pinching her thigh. 

Dean yelps and pulls back, looks at his stupid sleepy face, his bloodshot eyes, the pillow lines on his cheek. “Bitch.”

“Jerk.” 

Her gaze catches on his dimple before drifting up to meet Sam’s eyes. The already small space between them is swallowed up even more when their eyes lock. 

Sam’s hands drag slowly up her back, and it could almost be fraternal except for the way Sam’s biting his lip and the way Dean’s nipples have been hard since she woke up with 220 pounds of muscle all up against her. It's clumsy with his cast, but he keeps up the steady strokes.

“Sammy,” Dean says, a warning, or maybe just the opposite. 

“Dean,” Sam replies, sounding as desperate as he did earlier. He pulls her down to his lips, and she goes easy as anything; she just goes, as if this isn't the one thing she's been trying to keep from happening. The one thing she told herself never ever should. 

Sam’s good hand comes up to thread through her hair while her own wraps around his neck, the skin hot like a brand. 

“Dean, Dean,” he mumbles against her lips, shallow kisses over and over, hot and just shy of desperate. Sam pulls her closer, till they're back to how they woke up, legs tangled and thighs slotting. Dean’s tongue inches out, touches Sam’s lips, waits for him to be the one to lick between hers. They moan at the same time, and she pushes in tighter, her tits up against him, her body on fire. 

He's touching her everywhere -- back, tits, ass, the backs of her thighs -- except where she wants it most. He twists his arm awkwardly as he palms at her and hisses. 

“Easy there, tiger,” she mumbles into his mouth, his jaw, and he laughs. 

They make out like that, hot and fast then slow and steady, roaming hands and gasping breaths, until Sam yawns and laughs and pushes his nose against her neck. “The room is still spinning.”

“You're ridiculous,” Dean breathes, fear pulsing hard through her, mind catching up to what her body was just doing.

“Raincheck?” Sam asks, and she flashes on not-Sam outside that Stanford bar, except this is the real deal this time. Sam is thumbing her lips, smiling at her in a way she's absolutely seen before yet feels so different now. It's his ‘Dean’ smile, but also so much more. Maybe in his drunken sleep-laden state he thinks she's Jessica right now. 

They've never talked about it. How Jess had her same complexion, her freckles, her blonde locks. Never talked about how Sam hasn't gone for that type since. 

“Sure, Sam,” she says, the lie sticking in her throat because this can't happen again. She can't let it. 

“Night,” Sam says, still sounding drunk but happy.

Dean waits until he's asleep again before crawling into her own bed.

The next morning, Sam’s hungover and pathetic, and when Dean asks if he remembers anything from last night, she's not sure what she's inquiring about more: the part where Sam begged her to kill him if he goes Darkside or the impromptu incest. 

She's relieved when the answer is no either way. 

After they save a kid and leave another grateful mom, Sam has the nerve to crash her world down by telling her he remembers. And she promised. 

Dean has no idea what he's asking her to make good on: the killing or the banging. 

Both scare the shit out of her. 

Sam keeps shooting Dean looks as they drive out of town, and it makes her itch. She isn't _positive_ he remembers what happened after he awoke a second time, but she's pretty sure he does. The looks he's shooting her -- they feel flirty. Like a promise. When they stop to gas up, Sam buys her a slushie and quotes _Heathers_ at her. 

“Our love is God,” Sam says, grinning as he hands it over. It was one of the first R-rated movies Sam saw, when he was 10 and they were in a motel room with HBO and Dean wasn't sure what she'd wanted more: to be Christian Slater’s character or to bang him. 

Dean goes hot all over. “Winona was hot in that,” she says because it's safe, it's good. Bonding over chicks. The old reliable.

“You're--” Sam starts, and then ducks his head, color rising on his checks. It's hypnotic. 

“I'm what?” Dean grins, sucking on her straw. 

Sam raises his head, still blushing. “You're hotter,” he says, barely audible. 

Dean's jaw drops because yep, that's her baby bro having absolutely no game with her, and it's terrifying and thrilling and so fucking wrong yet so fucking perfect. 

“Wow, Sammy, pump my tires some more, why don't ya.”

Sam rolls his eyes, but he's still grinning and fuck, Dean is grinning back, and this is flirting, mutual flirting, and it feels so much different than when she does this in bars. It feels almost… innocent.

She starts laughing then, doubled over, and Sam raises an eyebrow at her. She doesn't exactly want to tell him how she's equating incest with innocence, though, so she just keeps drinking her slushie until it makes her mouth red. 

Sam doesn't stop staring at her for twenty miles. Dean blasts The Rain Song and Sam doesn't even try to talk to her, knows better than to interrupt The Rain Song. It runs over seven minutes long and Dean replays it three times. In that span of time, Dean has run through all the reasons this is a terrible idea and then circled back again. 

When they get to the motel and the woman asks, “King?”, looking between them the way so many people have, taking in how close they stand together without even noticing, how their shoulders are brushing, Dean can't speak. 

Sam looks at her, eyes raised in a challenge, and suddenly she's furious. Furious at him thinking this can be so easy, acting like this isn't the biggest thing on the horizon right now, even bigger than demons. “Two queens,” she says, voice tight, not looking at Sam. 

“Dean,” Sam says when they're in the room, all patience and reasoning. 

“I'm going out,” Dean says, throwing her stuff on the bed closest to the door. 

“ _What?_ ” 

“Don't wait up.” The cheeky grin she tosses over her shoulder probably looks as fake as it feels. 

Sam finds her, because of course he does. The bar’s only half a mile down from the motel, on the same stretch of road. 

And he finds her right when she's got his would-be-twin eating out of the palm of her hand.

“Buy you a drink?” Sam asks, stepping right in the space between their stools. 

The guy looks up and -- up at Sam. “I believe the lady has one.”

“I believe the _lady_ can speak for herself,” Sam replies, pissy as fuck. It shouldn't be so hot. 

Dean sighs. She'd be lying if she said she hadn't been sitting here for the last five minutes hoping Sam would walk in. 

“It was nice talking to you, Mark.”

“Matt.”

“Right. Thanks for the drink.”

Matt mutters “whatever” and walks off. Sam slips into his seat, and it feels too right, him taking the place of a guy that could never compare. She was a goner as soon as Sam came after her, knew she'd let the guy go, largely in shame. Sam's not an idiot. He's going to put two and two together any second. 

“So I guess I was wrong about your type,” he says after ordering a beer. 

And…Yahtzee. 

“Cutting right to the chase, huh, Sammy.”

Sam gives her a pointed look. “I'd say it's about time, Dean, wouldn't you?”

She looks out at the bar, and how it looks like every other bar she's seen on the road. She taps her nails against the wood, her arm resting against the countertop, the leather rubbing against it. “You gave me my nickname. I ever tell you that?”

Sam blinks at her. “I did?”

Dean nods, still looking down at the bar. The finish is uneven, rough. She wants to feel it splinter against her palm. “Yep. Dad tried to correct you, said it was a boy’s name, but I let it stay. Said I liked it.”

“Oh.” Sam's quiet for a moment before looking up through his shaggy bangs. “It's the most natural thing to me, ever. That name. More than breathing.”

Dean sucks in a breath before knocking back her drink. “We shouldn't do this, Sam,” she says, voice low, shaking her head, hair falling in front of her face. 

He cards his fingers through the wayward strands, tucks them behind her ear. “I don't care,” he whispers. 

Dean shivers. “God dammit, Sam…”

“Or I could just leave you to your imitation.” He jerks his head in the direction of the guy. Dean blushes. 

She searches Sam’s eyes, and all she can find is sincerity and love and, beneath it all, still tucked away, desire. 

“You aren't supposed to want this, Sammy,” she whispers, already moving closer. 

Sam follows suit, closing the distance between them. “Tough shit, Deanna.”

It feels like sparks when their lips connect, and Dean doesn't care how cliche that is, it's the god's honest truth. She can still taste some of Sam's own slushie through the beer and above his own flavor. She groans and pulls him in closer, hands in his jacket. 

“Take me home, stud,” she whispers in his ear when his mouth is on her neck and her nails are digging into his back. 

“Bet you say that to all the guys that look like this.” Laughing, he's laughing at her. 

She bites down behind his ear, making him hiss. “Douchebag.” 

He's still laughing as they walk out, arms around one another. Dean’s laughing, too. 

She lets Sam drive them back to the motel, but only because she wants to feel him up and see what it takes to get him to grit his teeth and tell her to stop. 

Once inside the room, she pushes Sam up against the wall and climbs him like a tree. 

“God, oh fuck,” Sam groans, holding her with one hand under her ass while she sucks a trail of kisses down his neck. “I'd take you right against this wall if I didn't have this fucking cast.”

Dean laughs, breathless. “Quitter. Guess I'll just have to push you down and ride you.” She presses the words against his chest and hears a sharp intake of breath. 

“Christ, Dean…” 

Then they're kissing again, hard and wet and messy, and he's walking her to the closest bed and dumping her on it. Clothes come off in a flash (Sam peeling their father’s jacket down her arms and tossing it behind her head should be fucked up, but all it feels is hot and somehow symbolic) and she sits back, naked and laughing while Sam struggles with his shirt and it gets stuck over his head and on the cast. 

“Something funny?” he growls, and before Dean can say, “Your face,” Sam's grabbed her ankle, tugged her further down the bed and settled between her legs. 

Dean can't think beyond “shit” and “fuck” and “oh god, Sammy,” after that. Sam's tongue is like a revelation, inside her, over her clit, along her inner thigh, mapping her skin and taking her apart piece by piece. She comes that way, body arched and breasts heaving, Sam's name the only word she knows.

After, she pushes him down so his head’s near the foot of the bed and climbs onto his dick after giving it one long, loving lick and grabbing a condom from the back pocket of her jeans. 

Sam's big, maybe the biggest she's ever had, and when she took a moment earlier to just grin and give him a hghi-five, Sam blushed so hard it went to his ears. 

Now that she's on the thing, getting accustomed to the girth and length of it, she realizes a high-five wasn't enough; she might have to compose songs and sonnets for Sammy’s dick. 

She tells him as much, mostly to make him laugh; Sam’s all flushed-faced and wide-eyed, flat on his back on the bed and looking like he's about to lose it any second. Dean isn't having that. 

“You're crazy,” Sam laughs. 

“Obviously,” Dean replies, bouncing a little, working up to a rhythm. 

“Oh god,” Sam groans, reaching up to squeeze her tits, the hard material of cast feeling weird against skin. She can feel the amulet against her neck, wearing nothing but the best present she's ever received, and when Sam reached up and drags one finger over it, she nearly comes, tensing around his dick, getting wetter by the moment. 

Sam's eyes are wide; he keeps one hand on her tit, rolling her nipple between his fingers, and the other loosely clasped around the necklace, like he's thinking the same things she is, like he knows how much that damn thing means to her, will always mean to her. “Oh fuck, baby,” Sam gasps, eyes rolling back in his head as she fucks him harder, faster. 

Dean makes a face. “You'd totally be the endearments kinda guy,” she gasps, rocks down against him. Yet, unlike other guys that have pulled those soppy names with her, she finds herself not caring. In fact, it sent a frisson of want right through her. 

Sam bites his lip, rolls his hips upward. 

“Not really,” he says quietly after a moment. 

Dean just stares at him before surging down and kissing him, throwing everything she has into it. Sam groans, long and broken into her mouth. 

“Sammy,” she gasps, biting at his mouth, his jaw, circling her hips and fucking down harder, faster. 

“Dean, _Dean_.”

He slides his good hand downward, finds her clit and rubs. She gasps, buries her face in his neck. He's got his knees bent now and is fucking into her with every upstroke while she rides back on his dick, her tits bouncing between them, his choked-off gasps filling the air along with her cries as she starts to come. 

Sam isn't far behind, follows her as she squeezes tight around his dick and pulls his orgasm out of him. 

She collapses on top of him, and he kisses her hair, her cheek, her forehead. 

“You're gonna wanna be the big spoon after this, aren't you?”

Sam's laughter is bright in her ear, and Dean can almost forget about the darkness swirling around them both. 

“Maybe,” Sam admits, voice fond and happy. 

Dean sighs like it's the worst thing she's ever heard, but still flops onto her side after they've cleaned up and lets Sam wrap a strong arm around her. 

"You deserve better than this," Dean says quietly, against her better judgement, when Sam's settled in behind her, nosing at her hair. 

"Than what?"

"Me." _Us, something so far from normal_. 

Sam stills for a moment before kissing her shoulder. Dean’s pretty sure he can hear everything unsaid. "How about you let me decide what I deserve."

It isn't a question, but Dean still shakes her head. She finds his hand in the dark of the room and squeezes. "I'm kinda fucked up, Sammy." Cheating death twice in less than a year, losing your dad, and being told you might have to kill your baby brother whom you're in love with will do that to a person, she supposes. "Kinda fucked up" might be the understatement of the year. 

"Yeah and I've got psychic powers and some sorta evil destiny," Sam says, pressing open-mouthed kisses along her shoulder blade and making her tremble. “Quit tryin' to one up me, Deanna."

Dean laughs, incredulously, and squeezes his hand harder. Sam tilts her head back and kisses her, slow and lazy until she can't help but turn in his arms and turn it into something hot and needy, already addicted to him like the worst kind of drug. 

“Nothin’s gonna hurt you, Sammy,” she whispers later when she's sure he's asleep, tracing the arm he's got wrapped around her with her fingertips. He might be the one holding her right now, and they might’ve just done something that can in no way be categorized as fraternal, but she’s still his big sister, and it's still her job to protect him. It always has been. They've come this far, crossed the final line that remained between them, and she's not about to lose him, not now.

It may not be the promise he's asking her, for but it's the one she's gonna try her damnedest to keep. 

[end]


End file.
